Whether it’s political (the second half looks pretty Brexit: “Aftermath”, “Catastrophe Anthem”, “Living Fantasy”, “Un UK”) or more private, there’s something at stake in every track. [May 2017, p.61]

The whole set has the provisional, unfinished feel of a diary or sketchbook. Some tracks are arranged so sparsely you’d think they’re missing parts; the flipside of this is that For You & I an incredibly personal, even intimate listen. [Nov 2019, p.64]

If anything Quadra is even better [than 2017’s Machine Messiah], expertly filtering fresh textures (the fat synth that opens “Isolation” immediately raises an eyebrow, along with the Carl Orff-like chorale of “Last Time” and the Bollywood-ish orchestration of “Capital Enslavement”) into tightly coiled songs whose ferocity is comparable to Exhorder’s 2019 comeback Mourn The Southern Skies – albeit with a great deal more ambition and (effective) experimentation. [Feb 2020, p.56]

These days, addressing race and gender in doom metal is considered extreme in itself; with Gas Lit, the duo demonstrate that extremity is not just found through deftly executed blastbeats and downtuned riffs, but within the decision to create music that defies categorisation. [Feb 2021, p.46]

Armed with limited instrumentation and Knapp’s understated vocal, the album’s seven tracks take on a form of storytelling, made alive with synthesized fluttering bat wings, bouts of sax squall and sinewy electronic backbeats. [Jul 2022, p.53]

This pairing actually works almost as well as the one that produced that incredible LP [1964's Folk Roots, New Routes]. [Nov 2011, p.67]

Closer Apart is a dazzling bilingual synth pop album that blends the wavy bass and beats of kwaito and gqom with postgrime and UK funky. [Aug 2018, p.58]

Circle’s ability to fuse distant or disparate modes and styles is part of what makes their music so compelling. Where attention might before have been generated out of the way it all fitted together, the tension here is more about viscerality, more about the vocal and guitars tearing through your body than seeping into your brain. [Sep 2017, p.48]

It blends jazz, funk, dub and electronic sounds into a seamless, at times psychedelic whole. [Nov 2019, p.66]

The Sun's Tirade is a master class in restraint and pacing. [Nov 2016, p.64]

The album is consistently fast-paced, a simple but effective trick to amp up its pop thrills. [Mar 2022, p.46]

For those looking to block out the outside world and escape into something soothing and sublime, Past Life Regression will most certainly do the trick. [Jul 2022, p.56]

The musical quality is high, and it’s unusual among the saxophonist’s post-1959 studio recordings in reprising earlier compositions – he mostly featured new material. Coltrane’s rather unvarying dynamic level makes him a less effective film composer than his former employer Miles Davis, with his dramatic mastery – but Trane can’t be blamed for not fitting his music to the action, given that he had little idea what that would be. [Nov 2019, p.69]

This intriguing, relatively mild entente between elegiac melodicism and freeform lyrics has many moments of quiet innovation. [#256, p.63]

Ariel Pink's writing is completely scattergun, but this is what can make it so disarming. [Sep 2012, p.56]

She’s an astonishing live performer, but this is the next best thing and most likely a shoo-in for the best concert recording of 2022. [Mar 2022, p.46]

It's a firm and deliberate withdrawal from the spotlight but one tinged with sharp self-awareness and the humane intelligence that governs all of Bunyan's work. [Sep 2014, p.52]

Six decades later, this 90 minute slab of previously unreleased Monk reveals some strikingly fresh angles on his working methodology. [May 2017, p.68]

“Ablaze”, “Beauty In Falling Leaves” and the monumental title track attain a state of angelic transcendence before crashing solidly back to earth with “The Screen”, a stone cold falling meteor of a song that leaves a crater in its wake, and is probably the heaviest piece of music they have yet produced. [Aug 2018, p.59]

The core line-up of guitarist Buzz Osbourne and drummer Dale Crover, along with the recent addition of Steven McDonald from Redd Kross on bass, attack the vast catalogue of songs with great zeal while making sure to confound the masses in the way we somehow expect. [Oct 2021, p.51]

Best Troubador is a joyous reclamation of song, gentle and true to Oldham’s personal, more delicate style. [Jun 2017, p.60]

Much of the album feels like this – danceable songs with lyrics that urge thought about the state of the world and your own place within it. The most engaging moments are those where Hval lets herself escape into the pure fun of making jams. ... On a quarantine album, a little bit of escapism feels right. Hval continues to ponder philosophy in her writing, but throughout Classic Objects she brings light to her fears and memories too. [Mar 2022, p.48]

It’s hard to know exactly what he’s singing about much of the time, but Dawson’s ardour for the sound of language is irresistible. ... The Ruby Cord is Dawson’s most accessible album yet, but as elaborate as his futuristic visions may be, they remind us of the mess we’re all in the middle of right now. [Dec 2022, p.52]

There’s a beguiling modesty to tracks such as “Fire” and “4th Dimension”, while Yasiin Bey’s understated sprechgesang advising “Kids see ghosts sometimes” on the title track feels plausible, immanent, urgent. [Aug 2018, p.63]

The beginning of the record is slow – “News About Heaven” feels aimless, while the repeating melody of “Pray For Rain” gets tedious after its third or fourth time through – but with “Something Will Come”, the album’s ominous depth comes to light, ushering in a nostalgia that permeates through the final tracks and illuminates the depth of the duo’s sound. [Oct 2021, p.55]

For this album to be worthwhile, Hampson has to do more than revisit his old, gold moments. At the same time, this incarnation of Loop functions partly as a reassessment of what made the sound they landed on so glorious in the first place. Both notions can coexist, and for the most part they do, with loud, laudable abandon. [Mar 2022, p.48]

The eccentricity of the group remains intact, with tightly structured songs. [Sep 2014, p.55]

He just keeps getting better at writhing around in this narrow space of homage and usually lands somewhere just between endearing and brilliant. [May 2013, p.67]